Several recent stories, like this one from the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, report that influential Republicans have become increasingly resigned to the prospect of Donald Trump as their nominee. One theme in these stories is that the GOP “donor class” seems to have persuaded itself that Trump might not be such a bad general election candidate.

On that point, the donor class is probably wrong.

He cited the fact that more likely voters in America have an unfavorable opinion of Trump than have a favorable opinion.

So among Democrats, Trump comes out minus 70, among independents minus 27, and among Republicans plus 27.

A whopping 57 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable view of Trump, according to an average of the three most recent polls. That beats former record holder Pat Buchanan, who had a 43 percent unfavorable rating at this point in the 2000 election cycle. Buchanan, of course, ended up running as an independent.

So in seven months, Trump went from minus 32 to plus 27 among Republicans, something Nate Silver and company failed to consider last June. But it is now improbable for Trump to improve his favorability among independents or Democrats (or even the remaining Republicans who don't like him) in the next 10 months.

7 comments:

Nate Silver is the Karl Marx of statistics and polling. Marx's big ideological blind spot is that he never grasped how much circumstances and people can change with time. Nate Silver is headed for the trash bin of polling history.

Now yours is precisely the kind of thinking that got poor Karl in trouble. Throughout history, people have had a way of doing the "unexpected" by going against the odds. Life is more than a statistical coin flip.

However, I would like to see how the polls have been trending since the candidates announced to get an idea of what has happened. Presidential elections are dependent on the personalities of the candidates, the outgoing president, and the events that are between now and November. A trend line would give an idea how well the candidates have reacted to events and give a feel (I would not say prediction) for what may come.

FAKE NEWS FOLLIES OF 2017

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I live in Poca, West Virginia, with my lovely wife of 40 years, Lou Ann. I am an Army veteran and Cleveland State graduate. I retired after 40 years as a newspaperman. In 2016, I published "Trump the Press," which drew rave reviews at Power Line and Instapundit.